£600-a-month cannabis oil bill as woman in pain forced to wait a year
Gynaecology waiting lists means misery and huge expense
The long waits mean I can’t move on with my life, I can’t improve anything, I’m stuck Rachel Brown
AFORMER nurse left in agonising pain with endometriosis is paying up to £600 a month for a cannabis oil prescription as she waits for NHS treatment.
Rachel Brown said she felt ‘stuck’ as she awaited surgery.
It took a decade for the 32-yearold to be diagnosed with the longterm condition, which affects one in ten women.
It has seen her fail exams, lose jobs and fear she will never have a family of her own.
And as waiting lists for gynaecology appointments soared by 60 per cent through the pandemic, Mrs Brown claimed annual operations, designed to relieve her pain and improve her fertility, were never even arranged.
In excruciating pain likened to a ‘Chinese burn on her ovaries’, and also suffering ‘uncontrollable sickness’ due to a tumour on her liver, she began paying for a course of CBD oil, derived from cannabis.
“The long waits mean I can’t move on with my life, I can’t improve anything, I’m stuck,” she told the Post. “It’s really taken a toll. I felt lost, I didn’t know what to do,” she said.
Mrs Brown usually undergoes surgery every year and has had countless operations to remove or destroy areas of endometriosis tissue in her bowel – a procedure that helps relieve the pain and improve fertility.
But at her last appointment in June, she was told the wait for the
much-needed surgery could be as long as a year.
She is among 570,000 women on the waiting list for a gynaecology appointment, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.
She said: “I don’t feel any closer to having surgery or having anything done. I haven’t had an outpatient appointment for a very long time.
“It’s been so bad. After I have surgery the pain settles. If it wasn’t for all this waiting, I wouldn’t be on private
medication with cannabis oil.”
Crippled by pain, Mrs Brown has struggled to hold down a job throughout her life. One role was at a call centre but she was forced to put customers on hold to vomit due to the liver tumour.
“I kept having to change or quit my job. I couldn’t even do a call centre job as there were times I had to be sick and put someone on hold,” she said.
“I kept vomiting, I had to try something. Someone said: ‘Why don’t you try cannabis?’ It worked so I wanted to do it the legal way.”
She found the oils at an online medical service based in London, adding: “They were so understanding, I guess it’s because you’re paying for a service, unlike in the NHS. It’s a shame it’s not on the NHS, the medicine has changed my life.”
Clinging to long-held dreams of one day becoming a mother, Mrs Brown has booked to see a private clinic to find out if she can still have a baby.
But having to fork out up to £600 a month on pain relief is draining money for IVF from her and husband Jerome.
Now the Walsall couple plan to sell their new-build home and buy a property needing work so they can save cash. “We are still trying to get the money to have a baby. We are going to sell the house,” she said.
“We’re going to get somewhere we can fix up a little bit so we can get a good return from the house and use that money for IVF.”
With the oil helping her pain, Mrs Brown has been able to start her own business creating “starter period kits” to help schoolgirls.